Weeee!

I stuck up a new image at Xzevlin.com>Others. I had modeled the Green Goblin head a while ago from my latest "realistic" character model, and I spent a bit of time trying to make something out of him without rigging his body. I'm sorta happy with the results until I look at the Julie Bell Hobgoblin image that inspired it. That lady sure knows how to paint! It was an interesting test of adding wrinkles and creases to a model anyhow. The pumpkin looked so much better with another shader on it, but vRay seems to throw black spots all over it unless I use a vRay material. And since the vRay material makes absolutely no sense to me, all I could do was make it orange and kinda shiny. So in conclusion: vRay- great renderer, lousy documentation.

I hit page 100 of the novel. It's at the climax now, so I'm mostly writing action for the next 10 pages, then a mild jump back to character development stuff and then I have to figure out how to write a riot and make the ending not seem cheesy. I feel more and more comfortable writing everytime I sit down in front of OpenOffice. Hopefully when I'm done with the first book, I'll be comfortable enough to spend 2 days a week working on the next one. If the first one even gets published.

I'm gonna be workin' on a secret project tonight. My animation class was cancelled today, so I was hoping to use the time to finally lay out some of the new Shocking Tales strips, but then someone asked me to do a secret project. I'd tell you what it is, but it's a secret. Hush. Maybe I'll do the Shocking Tales layouts tomorrow. I have two storylines thought out that open up alot of future storylines that'll have some cool reoccuring villains, but I just can't seem to get into that comic mode. Now that I've got a mini animation studio starting to happen in the basement, I think I may start sketching down there to get me away from this comfy computer chair. It makes me sleepy when I sit in it.
by Elvis Deane!

The much revised site is now up! After months of my sites being a mess, I've cleaned everything up and made everything accessible from AstoundingAdventures.com.

Now, AA.com acts as my "studio" site for short films and my novel(s?). ShockingTales.com remains for the comic and animated series starring Lightning, which I swear will be updated soon. Xzevlin.com has become my "personal" site, where I'll post works in progress, comic experiments and any pinup art I do. I've also linked the particleIllusion tutorial site up to the front page, and the messageboard.

My 2003 Pinup calendar is now for sale. I've worked on and off on it since the summer and I'm pretty happy with all the finished artwork. It was a big experiment for me to try and make 12 images with that much detail in them. I've always been pretty lazy when it came to modeling background props, but I think working on the calendar cured it. It also got me to start working on a "weapon's cache", a folder on my drive where I have lots and lots of 3D weapon models. I'm adding enough detail into each one so that they could be used in images with high poly characters, but they'll also should fit in nicely with the Shocking Tales gang. So far I only have a few swords, an axe, and a handgun, but I hope for that to change.

I've also learned alot about Wings3D from the calendar. I can use it now to add detail to stuff that I didn't think I was capable of adding before. I was modeling a stone wall the other day, and using the edge extrude tool I figured out how to add cracks into stones and into the side of walls. It should prove useful when I try doing something realistic like a Boris-ish sci-fi pinup or a comic cover.

I just signed up for a classical animation night class at Sheridan so I can brush up on bouncing balls and the basics. I also just ordered the PLE of MotionBuilder. It'll be nice to have an animation tool that isn't 4 years old. I'll have no more excuses for being a lousy animator at the end of April.

I just finished a character I'm realllllllllly happy with. She only took a few days to model, complete with feet that look pretty good (a first for me!) and hands I'm really happy with. I hope to get some wips of her up onto xzevlin.com tonight, though she looks kinda funny without hair or clothes.

Things to do in the next while:

January- Work on a comic. Any comic. Animate a quick short. I want to do 2 minutes in 24 hours. I know I can do it.

February- This month will probably be dedicated alot to doing the greenscreen work on the film The End of the Year for my friend Ben Kukkee. I'm thinking I can composite all the footage in two weeks, but we're slotting a month just in case. There's some tricky stuff to comp and I think around 15 minutes of footage. It should be interesting.

I also hope to have the first draft of my novel done by the end of February. Only 30 pages to go...

by Me